Most are my perceptions of the societal group I write about. I am happy that some of my notes have come true during India's 2009 general elections; and on a couple of occasions, the New York Times editor, Roger Cohen has held views similar to my own; for ex. On January 7, 2009 issue of NYT had his OP-ED article and my contribution in Herald published on the same day, held similar views regarding partition of India and Israel vs Palestine conflict.

Friday, March 25, 2011

The boy said “My father says this is not the truth he meant, he knows truth is truth; its size does not matter. He wants to know what the ‘Eternal Truth’ is.”The teacher took him to the garden and picked up a cabbage. “Look, with this you will understand how the eternal truth is.”

The boy took the cabbage and peeled off its outer leaf. Under it was just as he had often seen at home. He peeled another leaf and threw it away and continued peeling and throwing them away. The teacher kept smiling. In time, all the leaves were peeled and thrown away with the boy having only the harder stalk left in his hand.The teacher asked “Now, what do you have to say?”“Teacher, is this the Eternal Truth? Oh, where is it?” boy asked.

The teacher swept his hand over the strewn cabbage leaves. “All this is the Eternal Truth in whose quest you came to me. Every occasion you threw a leaf away you cast aside the Truth of the Moment imagining Eternal Truth to be something dramatically different from the everyday truth arriving at the end. My child, ‘Eternal Truth’ is the description of every second that we ignore anticipating the holy moment when something hallowed will appear and introduce itself to us. In doing so, we spurn every moment and the opportunity that comes riding on it. The end is the hard reality of the moments we have not exploited and that shall not return; earlier leaves were the youthful part of this hard stalk, too. In simple words, live every moment fully, do not wait for the holy enlightenment.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

The boy went to his teacher and asked of him, “What is the meaning of ‘The truth’?”

Teacher said, “Come with me. It is easier to explain truth to you with some easy examples. Let’s go to the garden behind my home”. There, he picked up a cauliflower lying by a plant and said “truth is like a cauliflower, take and you will find the meaning of the truth.” The boy looked intently at it, carefully moved a small portion from the whole cauliflower and another, and kept them aside. However, the boy noticed that every big portion was like smaller one and that bigger divisions were made of smaller similar bulbs. Only the size differed. The boy had often eaten cauliflower at meals but it had never struck him this, a part just like the whole. He looked at the teacher enquiringly.

The teacher smiled and responded” Truth is like this, smaller bulbs are just as the bigger ones all having the taste and nutrients of the whole cauliflower. Lookalikes, too!

“Cauliflower, which interestingly looks like a human brain, is a nature’s product in fractal design. Nature loves this design and employs it often. As one example, electrons, who bring us electricity move around atoms, and Mother Earth, which carries all the matter that is these atoms, moves around the Sun. The stars move around in a Galaxy, which moves around the center of the Universe. Another fractal pattern!

“In fractals and in truth exemplified above, the size does not matter, ‘design’ does. There is no smallness about truth! Just as about corruption, little or big does not matter. Smaller corruptions accumulate into bigger scams”